After not doing such a great job of editing my works from the past three or four (OK, nine) books, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a monthly subscription to Grammarly. Remember, I'm only doing this for the month, and then I'll likely buy a year's subscription because it is so worth the money. (They can pay me to say that so that I get it for free if they want to.) Grammarly is kicking my butt, but I am loving it.
So, there I was, here I am, thinking I know what the heck I'm doing when it comes to writing and applying the correct punctuation, but no, I suck. I suck so badly that even when I'm typing this, there are red lines under the words. You can't see them; they are there. I'm making corrections, and you'll never even realize I did. This is the power and the magic of Grammarly.
I told myself over the past 9 books I wrote that I don't need it; I can do my own editing. I lied to myself. I didn't lie to the audience; I lied to myself. If and when I have the money and time, I'll pull all the other books and run each chapter at a time through Grammarly's AI and make changes before uploading them again. It should have been done before, but to be honest with you, when I uploaded the chapters in the past, I didn't realize that Grammarly was a paid subscription. I thought it only lets you make 100 corrections, and then you make your own. It was a tutor of sorts. (It's not; it's a flat fixer, and you should buy it.)
I'm doing the one-month thing now as it is $30 a month, which, for me, is expensive. I'll do the yearly subscription soon. It's only $12 a month, but you do have to pay for it one year at a time, so $144. But...and this is huge, it is worth it. It is worth every penny of it. I'm finding so many tiny and more significant mistakes. I'm correcting about 87% of them because I want some of the things I said to remain as they are to reflect a character's voice or attitude. I intentionally misspelled some things when I wrote.
For example, I'll say "gonna" or "hangin' around." Those are not really supposed to be written out that way, and they would not be used in a white paper, but they can be used in an informal novel. I'm seriously going to write a white paper, though, just to add the genre to the mix of things I've written. I'm that way. Getting back to the Grammarly thing, I'm on Chapter 4 of "1211" right now, pushing it through the AI, and it shows a potential 122 mistakes! WHAT? In one chapter? Well, let's be fair; much of it was spacing because I do the two spaces after a sentence, and apparently, you don't have to do that now. I do that.
I overuse the semi-colon, and the AI tells me so. I underuse the comma, and the AI tells me so. I have run-on sentences, which I KNOW I do, so the AI helps me write to clarify. I appreciate that. I also drop letters off of words because I'm typing and not thinking. I'll say "his" for "this" or "as" for "has" or "was," and the AI will find my errors. I love this thing. I really do love it. Feel free to get it or to use it. It has been so enjoyable to find out exactly how wrong I have been and am currently. I don't mind changing my ways; it's hard sometimes.
I've got to get back to it. Have a great Valentine's DAY!! I hope you have the best of times and get as much chocolate as you expected.
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